Ground breaking held on new West Queen West park

In the shadow of construction cranes and newly erected condos, shovels broke ground on May 24 for a construction project of a different kind.

Just south of Queen Street West on Lisgar Street, Councillor Ana Bailao (Ward 18 – Davenport), hosted a ground breaking for a new arts oriented park on Saturday, May 24.

“Yes we have condos going up, but we also have a neighbourhood being born, Bailao said. “A place where people can live, work and play.”

Yet to be named, this park will feature café-style seating with a garden area, a grove area with shade trees, and lighting mounted on art poles and timber columns. It was designed, with much community consultation, to be a venue for arts events and displays.

“A lot of people have immense pride in what is going on here,” Bailao said.

This park, Bailao said, is the result of hard work by the City, the community, residents’ group Active 18, The Theatre Centre and members of the Toronto Media Arts Centre.

The new park is located adjacent to the Toronto Media Arts Centre, a soon to be 38,000 square foot hub being built into the bottom floors of The Edge condo development. It will be home to a number of renowned photo and media galleries, film, video and animation production and training organizations, and film and video festival operations.

It is also next door to The Theatre Centre, which recently opened its new facility in the former Carnegie Library at 1115 Queen Street.

“We went through a long process of park design and I think we are going to come out with something good,” said Charles Campbell, with Active 18.

Construction is slated to begin in July in the parcel of land directly behind the Canada Post office on Queen Street West, but in the future the park will be expanded to take over the current Green P lot next to the post office, which will provide access from Queen Street.

Councillor Bailao invited members of the community to make suggestions through her website as to what the park will be named.

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Story originally posted on insidetoronto.com and will appear in the Parkdale Villager community newspaper